Mark Reutter is the author of the book Making Steel: Sparrows Point, and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might; and other studies and articles on the dramatic use of bankruptcy and consolidation in the global steel industry over the past decade. He was interviewed on Oct. 31 by Paul Gallagher.

EIR: You wrote in the Washington Post on Oct. 23, and republished elsewhere, that the U.S. bankruptcy courts have become, in effect, instruments of bank creditors and of managements which declare bankruptcy. What did you mean by that? What change is going on?

Reutter: Due to some changes in the law, and to changes on Wall Street, what was once shunned as the "court of last resort"—taking a corporation voluntarily into bankruptcy through what's called Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code—has become, in the last few years, a tool for the biggest money, and the sharpest "manager-specialists," if you will—to shed their pension and welfare benefits...................